So, my druid is "between campaigns" right now. Our last campaign ended with her leveling up to level 9 and gaining a whole bunch of treasure. So she is now going back to do some "downtime" activities, including some spell research, some home building and studying this tome she found in a dungeon.
The GM who ran the last campaign is now wanting to play so I am working with the GM of the next campaign for my druid on her downtime activities. With all the treasure she has she can do just about anything, it was one of those epic quest things with a dragon hoard at the end.
So the new GM has basically said "With all that gold, you can essentially work trades, buy stuff and otherwise completely re-equip your druid, so long as you stay roughly within the Wealth by level guidelines when you are done before going into my campaign". Or words to that effect.
It is important to note that she is an archer and she uses her bow as her typical combat attack in most fights, but will use spells when pressed and generally uses spells in major boss fights.
So I thought I'd come to here and see if anyone had suggestions for how to totally pimp my druid.
My main concern is that she get a bow with the guided property to utilize her high wisdom bonus, a headband of inspired wisdom +2 at least and a better AC than she has now (leaf +1 armor).
She will also need barding for her tiger.
So right now it's a blank slate. The GM generally doesn't like to go too far from the core books but he's already approved the "bracers of the falcon" and the "adaptive" enchantment for the bow, so he's got some leeway.
The druid in question has the following stats, without any magic items:
Str - 10
Dex -16
Con - 10
Int - 10
Wis - 20
Cha - 11
With the guided property on her bow, she won't need a high dex. She might benefit from some str in fact with the adaptive property.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Here's a quick list of stuff I've considered so far:
+1 adaptive, guided bow
bracers of the falcon
+2 elvish chain mail armor
+1 barding for AC
+2 headband of inspired wisdom
Boots of speed
I might go for the +1 armor, and use the 3000 to invest in scrolls. A metamagic rod of extend spell would do you good as well.
Greater magic fang, bark skin, long strider all have good durations, and even better doubled.
A variety of arrows will help with DR.
My current inventory does include a selection of scrolls and wands (she has good Use Magic Device skills) and a metamagic rod of extend. I have those on my "probably keep" list, but didn't want to post her entire inventory.
I figure I've got about 2,750g currently invested in wands and scrolls. The wands are: gravity bow, cure light wounds and resist energy. She's got too many scrolls to list, but most of them are looted, not purchased, and they aren't really that great except a couple of SNA IV scrolls.
How is an archery Lion Shaman? I never contemplated that. Mostly because I my build planned to get a second kitty through eldritch heritage (Sylvan). Do you use your wildshape at all? With a focus on Wis/Dex, did you consider getting agile property on an amulet of mighty fists so you get your dex added to your damage in wildshape? I was trying to think of a weapon for a Lion Shaman, if Archery is a good way to go, might be something for me to consider!
How much cash is left?
And yes, your current purchases are completely reasonable.
Azelyan, my druid is a rather unique character. She is a unique race, half dryad half wild elf. She was raised in a dryad grove as a dryad so she views herself essentially as a dryad.
This was all part of the backstory of a custom campaign where a dryad grove was getting destroyed as part of the campaign plot and I thought it would be cool to play an avenging dryad character as part of the campaign. The GM and I ended up with this custom race.
So, because of that, I started the character as primarily an archer who just happened to be a druid. And since then I've pursued the archery feat tree, so she now has PBS, precise shot, rapid shot and many shot.
Her typical tactics in battle are to ride her large tiger into position, fire off a full attack with her +1 shocking bow and conserve spells as long as possible. If the fight appears to be a difficult one, she will typically summon a tiger and/or send her AC into combat.
In serious fights she tends to buff up her AC and act as a battlefield controller with druid spells, summons and her AC helping to funnel the bad guys into the cuisinart that is our raging barbarian.
TL:DR - She uses the bow a lot, but summons and uses druid spells when appropriate.
She doesn't wildshape that much, her str is too low to really be effective in combat. She typically wildshapes to scout or for special purposes. On rare occasions she will wild shape into tiger form and join her tiger in combat. But her AC does so much more damage than she does in melee that she gets sorta embarrassed by it.
rkraus2, the GM has basically said to stay within reasonable limits of the WBL guidelines. For a level 9 character those guidelines indicate 46,000g to work with. The above list is roughly 32,000g, with the boots of speed taking up 10,000g of that. If I get those things and hang onto my existing wands and scrolls, that would leave me about 10,000g left.
Those boots of speed are killer. They would be so nice, but 10,000g? That's a lot to invest in one item.